


i think there's a flaw in my code

by voodoochild



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death, Explicit Language, F/M, Forced Pregnancy, Forced Prostitution, Genetic Engineering, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, The Capitol (Hunger Games), ahahahaha i thought i'd exorcised all my victor feels, cal is a programmed murdergoblin, eist just really loves his murdergoblin wife so much, poor baby triss i'm so sorry, seriously both of these book series are fucked up in separate but devastating ways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:29:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25740604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: Calanthe keeps going, because that's what they've trained her to do. [A Hunger Games fusion. Because this historical dystopia needed more dystopia?]
Relationships: Calanthe Fiona Riannon/Eist Tuirseach
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	i think there's a flaw in my code

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so about those content notes. This is set in the Hunger Games universe, where Victors of the Games are prostituted out by the government to wealthy Capitol citizens. You refuse, they kill your entire family. There is no age limit on this practice, and it's implied that all Victors have to go through this. You can be a Victor at 12, which is what happens to a character in this. The rape/underage content is dealt with as something incredibly horrible that occurs to that character, but it is not depicted in detail, simply the aftermath. The nonconsensual prostitution of other characters, who are above the age of consent, is likewise not depicted, but Calanthe in particular discusses and works through some of her own issues regarding it. I would advise you not to read this if it might be triggering for you.
> 
> Further triggers: Discussion of alcoholism (especially post-Games drowning one's Victory trauma). Pregnancy/Fertility/Genetic fuckery where a fascist government runs a Victor eugenics program. Killing for hire but also pleasure. Programming and gaslighting of children, particularly in the Career program.

Calanthe keeps going.

That’s what they’ve trained her to do. Stay on your feet. Don’t rest. Don’t think. React and then act. From the moment you enter the Academy to the moment the Gamemakers declare you a Victor. All the simulations and tests, all the killing in the name of not-dying-in-vain. 

Her Games had been ten days, and she’d slept roughly the same number of hours. Sometimes it was the other tributes, trying to catch her unaware, and sometimes it was the Gamemakers - lizard muttations and walls that moved inward and earthquakes that shook the stone walls of the structures. She rested when she could, killed when it was necessary, and when the arena shrunk to the size of a small maze, finished the rest of the tributes off before the entire thing came down around them.

(Sometimes she wakes up remembering her Games. That’s normal. Other times, it’s the what-ifs, if she’d been slower or more frightened or forgotten her training or hadn’t taken to killing so well.)

She keeps going, step by step, day by day. The alcohol helps, a vile concoction her Mentor Meve pushed into her hands on the train back to One. If she drinks enough of it, she has a few dreamless hours. Days turn into weeks, the Victory Tour providing her with ever more opportunities for drunkenness. They find it fascinating - a fourteen year old girl with blood in her teeth, who speaks with a rough growl instead of a tinkling glitter.

(They dip her in gold for the fucking Tour poster, with scraps of chainmail over her tits and cunt. She remembers the sword cutting into her shoulder where she had to hold it still for hours.)

It’s on the Tour that they first start calling her the Lioness, and by the time she gets to District Eight, there is a blue and gold brocaded lion print they gift her. A week later, in Five, dozens of women and girls in the crowd are wearing gold lion pendants and shoulder armor like hers. It is the same in the rest of the districts, everywhere she turns it’s all gold and lions and armor and swords. She drinks and she bellows and makes the crowds laugh. She sobers up for her crowning, and of course, the fucking crown is gold. 

Snow is all smiles for the ceremony, but when the camera turn off, he hustles her up to a towering balcony, where there is a book waiting for her. It’s a choice which isn’t much of a choice, sign over your body to the Capitol in exchange for food and clothing and the safety of your loved ones.

She doesn’t hesitate, because she hasn’t belonged to herself from age 8.

Maybe it’s a kindness, granted because she amuses Snow, but she isn’t given to a man until a year later. She’s lucky that she’s already deadened the pain, that the Capitol is agog over her teen-warrior queen look, and she’s luckier still that one of the Victors from Two fucks her before the buyer is ever in the picture. 

She keeps going. 

Drinking and fucking and sleeping when she’s able. Put through more training, where she’s taught how to play different roles - a dominatrix instead of a queen, a sadist instead of a warrior. Her first child is purchased by Roegner Cintra, a wealthy Capitol business owner, and she’s thankful beyond measure he doesn’t require her to carry naturally. She’s a poster child for an all-incubation pregnancy, keeping her body young and perfect.

Some small part of her, one she only allows rein in the pitch-blackness of night in her sky-high apartment overlooking the central city of One, howls in anger. She wants the alien-yet-precious thing that is her daughter, she wants a single night free of someone’s touch, she wants to fling herself from the open window, she wants to run as far as she can until there’s fresh air.

And then there’s the 57th Games, her second as a Victor and Mentor. One of the tributes is 17, older than her, and he thinks she doesn’t have anything to teach him. It’s his own damned fault he gets gutted in the Cornucopia by the boy from Four. The girl lasts nearly until the end, because she’d fucking well listened to Calanthe when she told her that hiding and sneak-attacking was a perfectly acceptable strategy.

It’s not a pretty death, skewered by iron spikes that shot up from the ground. The girl from One and the boy from Seven were both caught by them, but that boy from Four had been far enough away for them to miss him. The spikes retract, leaving her tribute to fall into the Four boy’s arms.

Everything stops as the cameras focus on his face, the tears in his eyes.

***

When he’s announced the winner of the 57th Hunger Games, everyone knows Eist’s name, though his beautiful eyes are more infamous. God, the crowds are going to be gagging over that shot for years - beautiful, apologetic Eist with his beautiful sea-blue eyes, cradling the tribute from One and gently lowering her to the ground, his biceps flexing. He’s seventeen and stunning, and the Capitol elites are already salivating to bed him. 

Calanthe watches from the shadows at his official Victor’s celebration, drinking some truly excellent bourbon and hanging off the arm of her sponsor for the night. Tiberius is youngish and likes the warrior fantasy more than the hellcat domme, so she’s in a royal blue dress slit up to her inner thigh, with a golden corset wrought like armor. He likes her acid-tongued and predatory, which suits her fine, in this spectacle.

“You’re rather taken with our newest Victor,” Tiberius remarks, sipping at his claret.

She lets her gaze slide over Eist, liquid and heavy. They have him in hand-tooled leather, all straps and buckles, knee boots polished to a sheen. Designed to emphasize his height and breadth, those muscles and reflexes that led him to survive a fairly nasty Games.

“He’s delicious,” she says, her tone light but her meaning true. “I hope they let me jump the line for him.”

“With Xiomara Riario in the lead? I don’t think so.”

Ugh, that fucking woman. She’d been the resident hellbitch before Calanthe, and is extremely put-out that Calanthe’s youth and wit are rated higher than her own. Maybe if she had a sense of humor under that poison-green hair.

Calanthe had gotten the opportunity to meet Eist a bit later, when tongues were looser and the lights were darker and even his charm was flagging. She’d followed him out to an alley left there for the aesthetic, where Capitol elites smoked or shot up, pretending they were slumming it. Eist is washing his mouth out, spitting into the concrete.

“Should switch to something nicer. The rotgut’s great for the first six months, it’ll put you right out, but you’ll be puking your guts up every morning.”

He wipes his mouth with his wrist, blinking those beautiful eyes at her, and a sly smile crooks the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t know you cared about anyone, Calanthe.”

Her name sounds so sweet on his tongue, like chocolate, savored. As slick and dark as they’d made him up for the tributes parade, clad in sealskin and silver like a barbarian prince. She retrieves her thigh flask of bourbon and holds it out to him. “Only pretty Victors like you. Try this.”

“It could be poison.”

Well, he’s right to say it. Meve had taught her to test each drink for drugs or poison, given her an opal ring that would signal its presence. She lets a drop hit the ring, which flashes green.

“It’s not. But get yourself something like this. If you don’t end up dead, you might find yourself in worse circumstances.”

Eist takes the flask and drinks, his tongue flicking out to lick the bourbon off his lips. “What’s worse than dead?”

She laughs bitterly, curling a finger into the lace of his shirt and sliding closer. Enough to be pressed against some of that broad chest, to put her head about level with his chin because he’s entirely too tall. 

“Did you sign the book?”

He shakes his head, sharply. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Snow will make you sign. Get your Mentor to tell you what it is.”

“Bran would have told me anything important.”

Oh, right, there was a brother. Same eyes, not as beautiful.

“Perhaps he thinks he’s being kind,” she says. She lets a finger rest on his lips. “I can see the appeal. But this world of being a Victor is worse than death. This never ends, my darling, and once you understand that? Come find me.”

***

She keeps going.

One year, then two. Six tributes, not a Victor among them yet. They don’t let her speak to sponsors - Meve handles that, with her pretty green eyes and her heart-shaped face - they drag her instead to the Academy. She’s now ten years older than the youngest recruits, the ones with stars in their eyes and “Lioness” on their tongues. 

She teaches them how to kill with every weapon she knows how to handle. Sword week is always a highlight, but she teaches them knives, axes, spears, maces, blowguns, darts, tridents, and sickles. They have other instructors, Victors skilled at hand to hand, but the kids seem to come to her with all their questions.

She is not a patient teacher, because she had none, and she is not particularly kind, because no one was kind to her. She expects perfection, and receives it much of the time, as Careers who do not excel are cut. The next year, two of her students are Reaped, and she allows herself to hope for their win, because this time she had something to do with their training.

The other Victors have told her that if she trains a winner, she can ask Snow for a gift. She knows she will ask for her daughter to raise, and these two children she’s trained are the way to get what she wants.

The boy dies after the girl from Three drives a spear through his throat. It’s only day two.

The following days are just awful. The girl this year is good, an absolute hellion with a knife, but the Gamesmasters seem to be running through every weather-based trick they can. Heat, snow, wind, rain… more tributes are lost to the elements than anything. It’s one thing for a tribute to die at the hand of another, that’s an honorable death, at least. She can’t imagine just slipping away to the cold, struggling to breathe in the heat.

It’s day eleven, and there’s a bright spot. Four of the six left are battling for some food supplies the Gamesmasters tossed in. Her girl is there with throwing knives, a Career boy from Four with a trident, a scrappy little boy from Seven with an axe, and a tall boy from Ten with a cobbled-together dual-spear. They’ve gathered each Mentor together to watch the battle on a big-screen with Fulvia Templesmith - get a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to be a Mentor.

Eist is there, made up all in sea-green. Scaled look to his jacket and boots, tight leather trousers, gold eye and lip makeup. She’s in all-black, because she’d just come from an appointment. Backless and beaded with gold and diamonds. There’s still a riding crop on her belt, and the prep team had only just managed to re-do her hair in time, threading the tiny diamonds through her braids.

When the other three gang up on the boy from Four - the biggest physical threat - she watches Eist’s face. He never once loses his charm, smiling at Fulvia, answering her questions. It’s true, then, not a facet he’s been forced to display for the cameras. He is genuinely lovely to talk to, gives thoughtful answers, flirts like he breathes. It’s something that is artifice in every other Victor she can think of.

The first mortal wound comes courtesy of her girl, a sharp little dagger right in the belly. The others finish the boy off, and as Fulvia tugs her over, oohing and ahhing effusively over Calanthe’s outfit, she sees the first crack in Eist’s smile. She wishes she could tell him that watching children die gets easier.

She steps between him and the camera, gives them some sound bites they love and a visual to die for, her glittering midnight hair, her beads-and-chiffon dress, the incredibly high heels. Her girl goes down to an axe, messy and vicious, and while there’s a tremor to her hands, she’s able to pivot her signature Lioness persona into heralding the girl’s family, the glory of the Academy.

No one notices her slip out twenty minutes later. No one notices Eist follow her.

***

The kids - Zenobia, her name had been Zenobia, the boy was Septimus, fucking remember them - won’t leave her head. Not when she walks the five blocks to the hotel, not when she opens the door, not when she presses the button for the elevator.

Eist slides into the elevator before the doors close, and she can’t even be angry he followed her. He looks like he wants to ask her something, and she places a finger to his lips. It’s been a few years since his win, he knows how the game goes, and he drags her closer, making it look like he’s kissing her neck. 

“I’m in room 315,” he says into her skin, “but I can’t guarantee the cameras aren’t there too.”

She cackles, gives the cameras what they want. If there’s a manic, strained undertone to it, no one hears it but them.

“928, and I can guarantee they’re not. You haven’t met Beetee yet?”

“No.”

“Come on,” she says, for the cameras, tugging him out into the hallway. Four, five, six doors, and she enters the code, pulls him inside and slams the door. 

The scream that’s been building since Zenobia died bursts out of her, a long and feral howl that makes her knees go liquid and everything in her crumple. She braces to hit the floor, but she finds herself in Eist’s arms, cradled like she’s something to be protected. The glitter from his makeup smears, brushing her hair in gold.

“It’s all right, I’ve got you,” he says, far too sweetly to be real. Too kind, too soft, they don’t beat it out of you in Four the way they do in One.

She sucks in a breath, shakes her head. “It’s not fucking all right, it hasn’t been all right.”

Screams again, over and over until she can feel the rage recede.

“I thought,” she says, exhausted. “I thought maybe this one… maybe one of them would win, and they’d leave me alone.”

“I know,” he says, and he doesn’t, they both know that. “Will you trust me, Calanthe?”

Stupidly, impossibly, she does.

His soft, gentle hands are in her hair. Pulling down the braided updo, picking the diamonds out. Tipping them onto a table. Unlacing her from the gown, retrieving a tunic from her suitcase, and handing it to her to pull on. God, he even turns away when she lets the top of the dress fall.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with me clinking when I walk,” he says, a bit chagrined.

She laughs, a real laugh, and pads across the floor to rummage through her suitcase. Finds the tee shirt and pyjama pants she was looking for, a change of clothes her fellow Mentor had mistakenly left in her bag. He’s of a height with Eist, they should fit.

“Can I…?”

“Yes.”

She can’t remember the last time she undressed a man she cared about, it should bring up so many flashbacks to sex she didn’t want to have. But it’s Eist - he puts himself in her hands without a second thought, calm and kindness in those pretty blue eyes. Peels off his fishscale jacket and black tee, kneels to unlace his boots and let him step out of his leather pants. 

He may be a gentleman, but she sneaks a look when he changes. She’d been right - absolutely delicious.

He looks so much better now, she thinks. Soft and rumpled, glitter still caught in his hair and a half-made up face. She finds some makeup wipes for them to use, and when all of it is gone, he is the one to pull her into his arms again, tug her over to the couch.

She should be furious, shouldn’t she? He isn’t paying for her, they’re not even friends, and yet he can just touch her and move her without asking. He stripped her to the skin and she’d stabbed the last man to touch her hand without an exchange of either money or permission. Eist has never registered as a threat, ever, and he should have. He’s a full seven inches taller, outweighs her by a significant amount of muscle, and only had two fewer kills in his Games than she did. 

And yet.

“You don’t have to talk,” he says. He sits a few inches away, but rests a gentle hand on her formerly-trembling wrist. “You don’t even have to let me stay. Kick me out, I’ll give the cameras a good show of displeasure and annoyance, make it seem like we fought.”

“And if you stay?” Her hand tenses in his. “They’ll expect things, between us.”

“They will. I can handle it.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re sweet, you’ve always been sweet. I’d make you lose that.”

He turns her hand over, runs his fingers over the pale skin, the blueness of veins underneath and the calluses from weapons practice. He has the same calluses. “They call you the Lioness, for your hunting, for your pride. I suppose you’d want another lion to match?”

“I see no lions in the Capitol, and right now, I don’t feel like the Lioness. I couldn’t even-”

She can’t finish it, biting down hard on her cheek to stop the tears. She can’t think of her, she won’t. Eist makes a soft noise, presses his mouth to her fingers, and she stares hard at the sliding door behind him. Glittering lights from the Capitol the only illumination, painting them in neon blues and greens. 

“I don’t want you to leave,” she says, finally. Looks into those sea-blue eyes and lets herself melt, for him. “You are the one person in this world that can calm me for longer than five minutes. Stay.”

He does.

***

She doesn’t fuck him, that night. Or the next. 

It is months before they have sex, before they want to for their reasons and not the Capitol’s reasons. She thinks she’ll scare him off, that she needs too much, because the people who pay for her don’t care what she wants, and what she wants from him changes every time. He won’t let her, does whatever she asks but slowly and surely wears down every excuse she has, and it’s worth it.

Eist has her softly and harshly. He has her carefully and roughly. He takes her against walls and in the plushest of beds. He puts her together and takes her apart. He gladly lets her hold him down and then ties her up. He loves her free of all artifice and when she can’t pry off the Capitol mask. Each time, he kisses her wrist, because it’s for them. His sign that no matter what, he accepts her. 

It is a thing she desperately needs, that year. Because it’s also the year of proving to Snow that she will do whatever he asks to be able to see her daughter. Calanthe goes through client after client, allows practices she would never allow before, and it tears pieces out of her each time.

One woman liked to slap her. 

Another woman made her lick her boots.

One man had her crawl on hands and knees through an entire mansion.

Another man cut her with her own knife.

She has two things in her mind when she endures this torment: her daughter and Eist. She doesn’t know what the girl looks like - big eyes, maybe, dark hair like hers - but she maps Eist’s body with perfect memory. Over and over, and he can see the toll it’s taking, but he doesn’t try to convince her to stop.

Not after she’d told him about the child. He’d been sick, had thought there was a low the Capitol wouldn’t sink to. 

He’s the one that comes to her with the hit list: five names, well-connected individuals, even a Victor, that Snow wanted taken out. Says he’d struck the bargain for her, if she kills the people on the list in a way that keeps the Capitol clean, she gets full custody of her now five-year-old daughter. She doesn’t know any of the people, and the one thing she’s always been good at is killing, so she does it.

It’s the flick of a blade, some misdirection for the police, and spacing out the murders that they won’t be discovered all at once. It’s practically nothing, wiping blood off her sword, ducking into the taxi that’s been set up to take her to the party (or dinner, or meeting) that’ll be her alibi.

The night she comes home from the final kill, he’s waiting for her with a wide-eyed little girl. She’s blonde and shy, more doll than girl, but she calls Calanthe “Mama” and tells her that “Father” named her Pavetta, and can she please stay?

(She’ll learn that Pavetta has an innate manner of cunning and skill with a blade. That Pavetta’s devotion to duty and ability to follow orders and excel at it is akin to her own. It will be many years of harshness and expectation and neither of them will forgive her for it.)

Once she kills for the Capitol, for Snow, she knows she’ll be doing it again. 

So she does, she keeps going, keeps killing when they order her to, keeps fucking whoever they want her to, and hoards her own piece of happiness in Pavetta and Eist. Somehow she has woken up dating him - marriage is out of the question until the Capitol allows it, she doesn’t want it anyway even if he does - and there’s a perfectly-crafted story of how she and that Victor she’d killed had been in love and had Pavetta, but now that the man was dead, she’s being so strong in raising her daughter alone. 

“Don’t let them hear her call you Dad,” she tells Eist, when Pavetta has played the 'Daaaaaad, Mom won’t let me do this please say yes' card.

He sighs against her collarbone, his hands warm around her waist. “I know. Between the two of us, I probably know better than you all the dangers that could put us in.”

***

She keeps Pavetta free of the influence of the Capitol until her ninth birthday. She can’t justify it any longer, because she’s a Victor, and she’s an instructor at the Academy, and her daughter will have to attend too. Pavetta swears she’s ready, that she’ll make Calanthe proud, but Calanthe can hear her crying over the phone to Eist every night during the first week of basic.

Her sweet girl. Tiny Pavetta, with the weight of a legacy of Victors and an entire District’s expectations on her shoulders. She feels helpless, knows every time she walks into the Academy to teach the third-years, that her daughter is out in the training course with the other beginners. Refuses to hunt down Pavetta’s instructors and oversee the training herself, because it won’t help. 

She has to be hands-off, she tells herself. Has to trust the instructors to do their jobs and her daughter to learn.

The 68th Games change all that.

It begins as all other Games do: the parade, the Cornucopia, death after death that all the Victors pretend doesn’t affect them. She and Eist do the usual circuit, arranging for one of the splashiest and high-profile parties at the hotel Eist’s family owns. Fourteen days in, and while her kids this year both went down to land mines on day six, one of Eist’s kids is still in the running. It’s the girl from Four, a male Career from Two, and the girl from Eleven.

Triss Merigold. Twelve years old, curly auburn hair, dark skin. The sweetest voice anyone's ever heard. A fucking miracle she’s lasted this long, her saving grace her skill at hiding and being light enough to navigate the mines without tripping them.

Some of the Victors are betting on what will take her out. Smart money is on the Career from Two, but Geralt causes a small stir when he bets against his own District. Puts money on little Triss. 

“You think you’re getting a piece of that, ghost boy?” Gloss says, and Calanthe nearly backhands the mouthy little prick. “You couldn’t afford her in your wildest dreams.”

Geralt sneers at the other Victor, his girlfriend Yennefer beside him with a matching look of disgust. “She’s a fucking child.”

The screen shows a shot of Triss, curled into a ball, trying to sleep in a crater she’d surrounded with barbed wire and traps. The fucking Capitol pigs have thrown a filter on it, highlighting her rosy cheeks and lips, shooting over the curve of her hip. Hinting at what the buyers could have if she wins.

“Tell me you wouldn’t take a bite out of her, Cash,” Gloss says.

Cashmere shrugs. “I personally like them aged a bit more, but that girl’s going to have plenty of attention. Those cute little freckles and all.”

“Oh yeah, someone’s going to pay a fortune to be the first to pop her cherry-”

“Shut your fucking mouths,” Calanthe snarls, getting to her feet. Fucking little upstarts, she’s never liked either of them. “That girl is a child, she shouldn’t even be in the Games.”

“Careful, Cal,” Gloss sneers, picking up a glass of champagne from one of the waiters. “You almost sound like you care about something other than fucking that fishmonger and lessening the Capitol’s whiskey supply. Merigold’s a nothing, anyway.”

“Get her name out of your mouth.” Eist has a hand wrapped around her wrist, but he’s coiled-spring tense beside her. 

Cashmere giggles her on-camera laugh - because they’re making for some prime viewing right now, thank fuck there aren’t any actual cameras - and presses a pink fingernail into his chest. “Don’t tell me you’d try it on with her, Tuirseach. Everyone knows you like them filthy as sin and twice as spitfire. Call me if you want to upgrade.”

“Show you fucking fire,” Calanthe growls, pulling her knife. Yennefer looks absolutely gleeful, Geralt amused, but Eist is pulling her back, telling her Gloss and Cashmere aren’t worth it.

The golden twins clear out, but if Gloss and Cashmere are running their mouths, there’s a reason. They’re second-generation Victors like Calanthe, and their parents run in political circles she wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. That means there’s interest, maybe even bidding on Triss already.

Geralt’s seen it too, unsurprisingly. He’s Career as well. “Find me if she wins,” he says to her. “Maybe we can get to her first.”

“Yeah,” Calanthe says, running her fingers over her knife. “Likewise.”

“I know where to reach Eist,” Yennefer says, and laughs brightly when Calanthe snarls at her. “Not like that, Lioness. Easy. I haven’t laid a finger on your mate. He’s just nice, nicer than you. Had a helpful little chat with me the night after I came to the Capitol.”

He confesses it all to her, at home. How he tries to get to each Victor after their crowning, like she’d done for him. Tries his best to warn them about what the Capitol can do to them. It’s so sweet and so him, she has to kiss him for it, even as she thinks he’s an idiot and he’s going to get them killed.

Then Triss Merigold wins. Then they start hunting for information - who might be bidding for her, who would have the money and influence to do so, which of Snow’s lackeys could be handling it. 

It isn’t enough.

She and Eist find the girl in a penthouse in the lakefront district, her buyer and Snow’s agent eating oysters and laughing as she huddles in the corner of a closet. Calanthe doesn’t know what happens, but she flings the girl at Eist and screams at them to get out. She only has a knife, but it’s fine for her purposes. It’s hardly a fight, just screaming and gurgling and two bodies left on the floor.

Eist usually handles cleanup and discussion with Snow, but this time, Calanthe keys in the number and tells whichever minion that answers that first, Snow’s not going to allow anyone in so much as the same room as Triss Merigold, and second, that if he does that to another little girl or boy, Calanthe isn’t going to stop at the buyer and the agent.

When she gets home, it’s surprisingly full of Victors, and not the ones she might have expected. Sure, Yennefer and Geralt are there, but so are Lyme and Cecilia. 

“She won’t let anyone but Eist and I in,” Lyme says, her pale face a few shades darker in anger. “There’s a medic I know, she’s on her way.”

“Tell me you fucking flayed those scum that hurt her,” Yennefer says. 

Calanthe cuts her eyes over to the girl. “Among other things. They’re gone.”

“Are they?” A small voice says, and Triss Merigold stands at the door to Calanthe’s bedroom. She wears a pink ruffled dress, painstakingly straightened with wrinkles from where it must have been pushed up. Her eyes are red from crying, but she isn’t crying now. “Promise?”

Cal knows she looks awful, bloodstained hands and shirt, hair a wreck from where the buyer had attempted to pull it. But Triss doesn’t look afraid of her, and keeps walking, tiny barefoot steps.

“I promise, sweetheart,” Calanthe says, locking eyes with Eist. Yes, this one is theirs too. “They’re gone. They’ll never touch you again.”

Triss’s lip wobbles. “I was good. I swear I was.”

No one in the room can touch that statement, but Calanthe kneels down slowly. Carefully. Showing Triss exactly what she’s doing. Not moving to touch her. 

“My daughter is a little younger than you,” she says, pointing to the door to Pavetta’s room, “but I think you and she might be very similar. She likes green, too. Would you like to sleep in her room tonight?” Triss nods, and Calanthe turns to Lyme. “Miss Lyme will sit with you until the medic comes. She won’t let anyone else in. Is that all right?”

“Can she stay?” Triss says, curling her fingers into Lyme’s. “Afterward?” 

“Yes, of course,” Lyme says, and she leads the girl into Pavetta’s room, shutting the door behind them.

Eist holds up a hand before Calanthe can say anything. He looks at the gathered Victors. “Thank you all. Geralt, you’ll call me when you finish what we talked about? Cecilia, you’re still okay for tomorrow?” Both of them nod. “Then I’m going to ask that everyone leave, it’s too crowded in here.”

Once they’re gone, Calanthe’s knees buckle, and she sits down on the floor against the couch. Eist, alarmed, goes to her, but she pulls her knees to her chest and shakes her head.

“I blacked out,” she whispers to him. “I don’t remember killing them. They’re dead, that’s for damn sure, but I just . . . reacted.”

“You did the right thing,” he says, kneeling next to her. “I swear you did. That girl in there knows you did.”

“She’s a child. She’s Pavetta, in three years.”

“Pavetta’s trained-”

She wants to hurl a glass at the wall, thinks better of it, and rips one of the couch pillows apart.

“You think that’s going to do a fucking bit of good if Snow gets it into his head to pimp her out? You know he will. She’s a Career. The child of a Victor, the grandchild of a Victor. Triple the worth of a regular Victor.”

“Love,” Eist starts, and she bites back a sob, winds her arms around his bicep. Rests her head on his shoulder, and he kisses the top of it. “Cal, love, she’s safe for now. We can start planning tomorrow. But she’s at the Academy and she’s safe. Triss is in the next room and she’s safe too.”

For now, she thinks, and lets him stroke her hair until the medic gets there.

***

Pavetta doesn’t know why her mother has suddenly pulled her from the first-year program and put her with the third-years. She just knows she’s been taken from her friends and everyone in the third-year program is crying favoritism and she hates having her mother as a teacher. Calanthe ignores all the protests and sniping and brattiness and drills Pavetta twice as hard as the rest. Her daughter excels, when she tries, and that’s all that matters.

Calanthe even presides over Pavetta’s kill test, and while Pavetta cries and panics, she passes.

She goes through the accelerated program, finishes just shy of her thirteenth birthday. Calanthe and Eist hold their breaths through the Reaping that year, then the next. Their luck runs out when Pavetta is fifteen, the usual age for a Career to be chosen. She’s proud, the little fool, tells Calanthe on the train that she’s going to win, and to stop hovering. 

Pavetta is dressed all in rose silk for the parade, a lion pendant between her breasts and gloves made of gold wrought like claws. There is no mistaking whose daughter she is, and Calanthe is forced to sit through interview after interview.

Yes, she’s confident her daughter will be this year’s Victor.

Yes, it would be magnificent to have a third-generation Victor.

No, she doesn’t think Pavetta will use a sword as her weapon.

She isn’t sure what you mean by insinuating Pavetta doesn’t seem anything like her.

She finds herself getting sick in the bathroom after the third round, which is where Enobaria discovers her, and delights in tormenting her. 

"Just think, your golden little kitten is going to be such a target. The tribute from Six uses a machete - how many pieces do you think Pavetta will make?"

Calanthe snaps, slamming Enobaria’s head against the tiled wall, breaking her nose. Blood drips down her mouth, between those filed teeth, and she tries to headbutt Calanthe in return. Cal is faster, if not younger, knows full well how sloppily Two trains their kids in hand to hand.

Of course, she couldn’t bank on Enobaria landing a lucky kick and tossing her into the hallway. People scatter, prep teams and socialites screaming, a few Gamesmasters watching the show, and a shadow ducks between them, tackling Enobaria straight to the floor. It’s Johanna Mason, utterly delighted to be punching things, and Enobaria slinks off after seeing she’s outnumbered.

“Where’s your sailorboy, Lioness?” Johanna asks, insouciant and lazy, straightening her shirt. “Should always have backup.”

“Where’s yours?” Calanthe returns, but they both know where Finnick likely is. 

“Doesn’t matter. You’re welcome for the help.”

“Thanks, little girl,” she says, and means it. 

Johanna extends a hand, helps Calanthe to her feet. She lets go, and turns to leave, but stops. She’s stonefaced, but anxious, and looks at a point over Calanthe’s left shoulder as she speaks.

“I know what you tried to do. You and Eist. Fucking white-knight rescuers of Victors who don’t know what the fuck they’re getting into.”

Calanthe takes a slow breath. “We didn’t get to you in time.”

“Nobody could have. Fuckers were too fast. I mean Merigold. And Vengerberg. And Cresta. You fucking know it’s impossible and you still help. It’s noble. Stupid, but noble. So . . . I hope your kitten wins, I really do.”

Johanna turns and walks off, then, but Calanthe’s being corralled back into the studio by the stylist to fix what damage she’d done her hair and dress.

***

Pavetta wins. 

Calanthe’s request is that no one be allowed to bid on her daughter, she’s to make her own choices, to a point. The Capitol gives it to her, and it’s the first year she and Eist haven’t been in a mad scramble to get to a new Victor. Of course, there’s the Victory Tour to contend with, where she’s to accompany Pavetta. Two months without Eist, two months in districts that don’t give a shit about her anymore, two months being on her best fucking behavior. It’s exhausting, and so she’s on a thinner edge than usual when Snow corners her at the post-coronation party.

“I hope you appreciate this gift I’ve given you,” he says, all false sincerity.

She bites back any of the thousand responses that come to mind. “Yes,” she says instead, quietly. “I am thankful for my daughter.”

“She’s such a shining example of Panem, Calanthe,” Snow remarks, sliding closer to her. She freezes, and he stops next to her, shoulders touching hers. “You’ve really done a remarkable job raising her as a Victor.”

Eist is across the room, his eyes are locked on her as Four’s resident escort Mousesack continues telling him a story. She tries to breathe, everything is Snow’s blood-and-metal scent and Eist’s eyes.

“Thank you, President Snow. I’m very proud of her.”

Snow’s smile widens as he catches who she’s looking at. “Do you know, I’ve never understood the pair of you, but you’re very captivating television. I’m shocked you haven’t asked to get married yet. You must know Tuirseach would do it in a heartbeat.”

Slow, calming breaths. Do not reach for her thigh knife. Do not snap his neck.

“He’s expressed as such. We’re just so busy, sir, we both keep so many appointments and duties for our Capitol and our districts.”

Snow puts an arm around her waist, which has the effect of both putting his mouth to her ear and putting his hand right at the slit in her skirt. 

“Let’s make another deal, Lioness. The last time we did so, I gave you a daughter, and you gave me a Victor. Shall we try it again?”

“How?” she bites out. Do not elbow him in the cock. Do not rip his tongue out. Calm.

“The scientists in this country can do amazing things. Your eggs haven’t just magically disappeared, they can be used for all sorts of purposes. Ten years ago, we began breeding a few children from Victor stock. The strongest and most skilled, combined into one child. I’ll give you the child we created from your genetics, and you’ll train it. I’ll let you marry Tuirseach if it’ll make it easier, but I expect a Victor even more stunning than Pavetta.”

She’s sure the panic is showing in her eyes, because Eist hisses something to Mousesack, who begins making an effusive, seemingly drunken toast to the President of Panem. This gets Calanthe out from his grip, and she beelines for Eist, pulling him out of the ballroom and into a stairwell meant for servants. Beetee’s jammers take care of the cameras and recorders before she throws herself into Eist’s arms.

“What did that fucker tell you?” he asks, holding her tightly.

She leans up to whisper it into his ear. It doesn’t feel real, like it should be said out loud.

“They made another child. I have another child. He wants another Victor.” She laughs bitterly. “He’s even saying he’ll let us marry.”

Eist curses under his breath. “What will you do?”

“The hell do you mean, what will I do? I’ve just agreed to marry you.”

“That’s the least of it, my love.” He kisses her wrist, his hands gently cradling hers. “I’m fucking ecstatic to marry you, but you’re telling me they’ve stolen and bred a child from you. Who is now going to be a part of our lives, and who Snow is expecting as, what, a thank-you for him sparing Pavetta the book?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I want to gut Snow from balls to brains and strew his innards like streamers, but I can’t.”

“I have missed the violent and disturbing metaphors,” Eist remarks. “How about this - let’s go home. Pavetta’s safe, she’s having a lovely time at her celebration. We have a very large bed, and I plan to strip you out of that dress as soon as possible. Think about that, okay?”

It’s a good plan.

***

She can’t sleep that night, has more nightmares of Pavetta dying in the Arena than she ever did during the Games themselves. And sometimes the girl has a different face - smaller eyes, but dark like Calanthe’s, hair waved where Pavetta’s had curls - but still dies just as horribly.

Eist finds her on the overlook, the small platform outside their bedroom window. Most buildings have turned it into a balcony, but Calanthe refuses to change it. She likes seeing the city spread out beneath her, her feet tapping the glass below. It’s freezing, so she’s stolen his favorite sweater to wear, a white cable-knit fisherman’s sweater that makes him look so perfectly the sailor people like to call him.

“I’m not sitting out there, you lunatic,” he says, keeping well back of the edge. 

“Wasn’t going to ask you to,” she returns, and he sits crosslegged inside on the carpet. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“You sit out here at least once a week,” he says, ignoring her platitude. “And sometimes it’s just to think, but sometimes it’s more. Tonight, I’m going to guess it’s a lot more.”

“I want to marry you.” She has to tell him this first. He’s something vital to her life; without him, she’d have probably jumped off this building long ago. “That’s not something that’s worrying me. I don’t care what I have to do for it, I want to be married to you.”

Eist knows she isn’t finished, lets her sit and try to speak and stop and try again. He’s so fucking patient, she doesn’t understand how.

“I want to raise that child. Whoever he or she is, they’re part of me. And whatever else I’ve fucked up with Pavetta, she’s still a Victor. She can take care of herself, and she’s as protected as she can be, and this kid . . . who fucking knows what their life is like? I don’t - I know I had a good family, parents with money, but from what Triss and Yen say, there are districts that are so poor the people are starving. How could I let my child, or any child, live in that?”

“You don’t have to,” Eist says quietly. 

“No, and that’s the third thing I want. I want to join the rebellion.”

“You think-”

“Don’t be stupid, Eist,” she snaps, looking him in the eyes. “I know there’s a rebellion and I know you and Geralt and Yen and probably Odair are up to your eyeballs in it.”

“Yes.” 

“Yes, you’re involved, or yes I can join?”

“Both, hopefully. It isn’t just my decision, there are a lot of moving parts. But I’ll do my best. We can use you . . . at the very least to keep Haymitch in line.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, you trusted Haymitch before you trusted me?”

Eist’s eyes snap to her, that laser focus he can employ that she finds incredibly hot. “You’re a loose cannon that I only occasionally have control of. I love that about you, I love everything about you, but a rebellion cannot afford someone with that kind of temper. You handle Haymitch, I’ll handle you.”

She thinks about making a joke about how he seems to like handling her, and does it fairly frequently in fact, but can’t quite bring herself to do it. 

“You’re the only one I can stand doing it, my darling,” she says, pushing herself back from the edge to sit in his lap. “I told you once that you calm me. You still do. You are safety and home for me, Eist Tuirseach. So marry me tomorrow.”

He smiles for her, private and soft and slow. 

“Gladly. Then we’ll steal our lion cub back, and give them a home.”

Calanthe will keep going, but it will be her choice.

**Author's Note:**

> ... aaaaaaaand then there's a rebellion that basically smashes Ciri in Katniss's role, but that's so much to deal with. I'm sorry, I'm still in shock over this dystopian headfuck being my first fic in Witcher fandom. Uh, hi?
> 
> Much, much love to my girl **mihrsuri** , who has been with me in this fandom journey for a very long time, and knows I'm always down for a Hunger Games fusion. This was originally her idea, and she first proposed a lot of the backstory (Geralt, Yen, and Triss's story in particular). 
> 
> Further thanks to **azelmaroark's** [essay on Career training in District 2](https://themockingjay.livejournal.com/450940.html) as well as their notes on D1 and the Academy.
> 
> Title courtesy of Halsey's "Gasoline".
> 
> If you're interested in some of the fashion, here are three of Cal's outfits:  
> \- [From Eist's Victor celebration](https://multiplefashiondisorder.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/rodarte-spring-2013-12.jpeg)  
> \- [From the interview before she and Eist skip out](https://7fc0d88d9d0a0ae8f794-8bf224969b94b1ed1f724da1cf212a68.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/product-hugerect-678307-195089-1461918122-c9f07d271261e5537cb23b1f942f4033)  
> \- [From Pavetta's Victor celebration](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61955kFJPZL._SR500,500_.jpg)


End file.
